ABSTRACT
—which she compares to those of Edmund Husserl—, Elena V. Timoshina reconstructs Petrażycki’s sociological project. She first examines the main critiques Petrażycki leveled at the sociological conceptions of his time. By comparing Petrażycki’s ideas with those of Eugen Ehrlich, Timoshina argues that Petrażycki’s unfinished project was not informed by empirical sociology. Further, based on Petrażycki’s methodological ideas (such as the principle of adequacy and the theorem of n + 1 theories), Timoshina contends that he considered sociology to be a theoretical science, the subject of which (or “object,” to use Petrażycki’s term) is the evolutionary processes that motivate human behavior. Timoshina also shows that, based on the distinction between sociological realism and sociological nominalism (as interpretations of social reality), Petrażycki opposed sociological realism. To cast further light on Petrażycki’s ideas, the last part of this chapter compares Petrażycki’s work with that of Max Weber and Alfred Schütz and maintains that Petrażycki’s sociological project closely corresponds with sociology’s constructivist tradition.
